26 comments:

10 points to the nice lady with the boomstick. The Republican party stopped worrying about personal freedom somewhere around the turn of the century (-1). It may well take another "Election of 1860" to remind them of their principles.

A ratchet indeed. The medieval rack was used more crudely but with the same effect in the end. These days it is advanced more slowly and quietly in hopes nobody will notice. And thus far fairly successfully.

Don't really care about CFL's(crappy f*****g lights). Bought a couple of cases of my sizes of incandescent bulbs when the dimbulbs first started nattering about CFL's. Planing to die while still wasting electricity and heating up the planet.'Course under obumblecare that could happen sooner rather than later.

GOP = Dem Lite. Somebody needs to start the Repeal-ant Party and chase the snakes out of Congress with a whip. If the Dems really want us to live like it's 1834 then roll back the laws to the number that existed then.

I think a good platform for any party in the next election is to rollback every government act since 1 January 2008. Then we can address individual acts of governmental idiocy after that including the CFLs and the like.

I hear folks talking about how the Republicans are going to take back Congress in 2010, but it won't be with my vote--I'll be going Libertarian, again. My elected officials (Porker, Lamar! and the slimy Bart Gordon) can't be trusted. Only one of them is a Dhimmicrat, but you wouldn't know it by the voting records.As for lighting, I have, so far, 5 flats of bulbs. At 32/flat, assuming 1 bulb replaced per month, I'm good until 2022. A few more trips to Save-A-Peso, & i'll be covered for the rest of my life.

The wife and I were discussing the 2012 Incandescent ban, and she decided the best course of action is to buy a case or two of incandescents before the door closes (and probably soon before the media starts hyping a rush)

I don't mind the CFLs as they last a damn long time, and the less time I spend on a stool changing bulbs the better, but when Weer'd-lings come into play I won't want a bulb containing mercury anywhere near where I child might accidentally break one whilst playing.

Heh, she used to be a nanny-state liberal. Somewhere that changed and I don't really care why. : ]

One of these days, Congress will get around to realizing that CFL's contain mercury, and that it is released into the environment every time one of the cursed things is broken. After all the hoopla about the (very real) dangers of mercury back in the '70s, I'm a little shocked that it will be MANDATORY that we have these things in our houses.

As for the GOP, I agree. The only difference between the GOP and the dems is that the GOP doesn't want to go quite as far, quite as fast, or spend quite as much money. The dems could pass a bill requiring half the population to be executed and the GOP would compromise on 1/3.

I'd say it's more of a flathead, because either way, we're getting screwed.

But I think I'll bank on these LED bulbs. They're energy efficient, not full of poison, and you can leave the light on for 5 straight years before they burn out. The only thing holding them back is that they aren't being sold by stupid douchebag hippies.

An incandescent bulb is a heat source that has light as a by-product. It really is a piece of crud. It just has been a cheap and functional piece of crud that everyone used it for this long.

I do like my CFL's for flood cans in the ceiling. Doesn't create updrafts into the attic for the hallway, doesn't add to the heat load in the kitchen. My house is newer, though.. I can handle the power uptick to turn them on.

LED's rock. Just need some work done on tuning the temperature of the light. Adjustable temp would be even nicer... soft white reading lamp? Sure! Bright shop light? No problem!

Yup, still problems with LED lighting, though I think with time we'll see that development curve of light quality/cost/lumens pushed to the point where CFL's will quickly be led from the playing field.

I think Philips has already dumped all R&D on the damned things. Tells me something about the technological merits of the platform.

I've replaced about half of my lights with CFL's, out of practicality. Most are under a lamp shade, in a glass tube, have a cover, and none are exposed, so breakage is a small concern, not a big worry. And its nice to have a brighter light in the socket and not worry over the brighter bulb burning the lamp from its heat. But even the "warm light" CFL's have a harsher light. I'm looking forward to the LED's - the LED Christmas lights are already here to replace my old C3 big bulbs outside.

Like wearing a seatbelt every time, I'm not against a good idea because the fed gubmint demands I do it, I'm against the fed gubmint demanding anything for me to do but contribute to the common defence and not interfere with interstate trade.

I keep telling folks because I seem to have found a niche that gets eyes opened wide, even by those who aren't gun nuts:

The laws that the Dems are trying to pass (in the case of this conversation, it was Socialist Healthcare) are going to remain on the books. They will pass by a sufficient - even bipartisan - margin, just like the AWB did back in '94. It will also cost the Dems control of Congress just like it did in the subsequent elections, and likely the White House this time if we're lucky.

The luck runs out, however, when the GOP gets their claws back into things. Did the GOP rush in and repeal the AWB? Hell no, and the next Republican ass-hat that wound up in the oval office actually said he'd sign it into renewal.

The Republican Party is going to repeal exactly two things next time they have the majority:

I did a near-total swap for CFLs back a year+ before there was any governmental talk about it at all.

I'm happy. I think I nailed the secret... don't replace a 40w bulb with a "40w" CFL. I changed 40W bulbs for "85w" and "100w" CFLs, in reality if I remember right 15w and 26w draw units. I also changed habits to leaving lights on for a while instead of on-in-out-off, as it makes the bulbs last longer.

It's been something near 4 1/2 years now, and I've only had 2 bulbs fail, one was an off brand and the other was in a glass globe fixture in the basement/workshop (where I promptly removed all the globes from all the lights and left them bare. It's a workshop fer chrissakes!).

LEDs I have little faith in. There's more efficient incandescents on the way though, and I haven't heard much of it lately but someone developed a radio-pumped xenon exciter that had the potential of being not cheap, but damn near indestructable, and efficient to boot (think a cheap single-freq transmitter, and a marble-sized quartz globe of gas... no connections).

Me? I'm running random thoughts through my head about inductive heating/hysteresis and the thermoluminescence of calcium oxide...